Journalist
Posted:
Solana and Sui blockchains faced a wave of massive cyber attacks this week, but only the latter briefly succumbed.
The attack, also known as a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, typically overwhelms a target with fake traffic, keeping legitimate users out. Although Sui saw a network outage during the attack, Solana was unscathed.
Source: Pipe Network
However, is the latest resilience enough to attract institutional players and erase Solana’s history of network outages?
Solana network outage history
Over the past five years, the Solana chain has seen seven outages. Five of the incidents were bugs related to client software (the OS run by validators), while two occasions were caused by the chain’s inability to handle network congestion.
Source: Helius
On network congestion, priority and local fees helped segment traffic and resolved the problem. Although the bugs linked to the client software were resolved, Solana’s client validator clients can still be a single point of failure (SPOF).
Notably, Agave/Jito has been the only long-running validator client. So, any issue with it would stall the entire network.
On the contrary, Ethereum has over five clients, and none has more than 50% network dominance. This eradication of an SPOF has allowed Ethereum to have 100% network uptime as it commands the largest institutional capital per TVL (Total Value Locked).
Solana’s client diversity
In 2025, Solana activated the third validator client, Firedancer, but it still has no staked SOL.
On a stake-weighted basis, Agave-Jito has 72% dominance, while Frankendancer has only 25%. In short, the network can still be compromised if the most dominant Agave-Jito validator client is attacked or has issues.
Source: Blockworks
As such, despite the commendable lightning-fast speeds and low transaction costs, institutions seeking reliability may still hesitate to adopt Solana.
In fact, as it stands, Ethereum remains the leader across key segments. For example – At the time of writing, Ethereum had 12 times more stablecoin supply of $183 billion, compared to Solana’s $15 billion.
In the lending market, Ethereum also has more active loans than Solana. It had $26 billion in active loans compared to Solana’s $2 billion at press time, translating to an outperformance of 13x.
Source: Token Terminal
Overall, Ethereum commanded a total value locked (TVL) of $68 billion across its DeFi ecosystem, while Solana had a TVL of $8.6 billion.
In other words, Solana has made significant strides and stabilised the network, but remains behind in terms of validator client diversity and strong investor confidence.
Final Thoughts
- Solana has stayed over a year without experiencing a network outage and survived a recent DDoS attack.
- Agave-Jito still dominates the Solana validator client software, which increases the risk of a single point of failure.